Flake Odds Point System

Flaking is one of the most frustrating things a man will experience in his quest for ass/love/something in between.  Plenty of intelligent commentary has been written about this baffling phenomenon — why it’s predominantly a female affliction, what steps can be taken to reduce the odds a girl will flake — so instead I’ll focus on what attributes and behaviors correlate most strongly with a tendency to flake.  These observations are based on my personal experiences and those of my friends.  It’s not a scientifically valid survey, but the anecdotes seem to jibe with what science has to say about female psychology.

First, it helps to understand the basics.  Why girls flake can be expressed as a very simple equation:

Options = flaking

where options means how many men she can attract.  The more desirable she is, the more likely she will be to blow off any one suitor, as another one is right around the corner.

Here’s a refined version of that equation:

Options + neuroticism + extraversion = flaking

meaning that if you’ve met a smoking hot attention whore with paranoid self-esteem issues you may as well wipe your ass with that number close.  You’d’ve been better off shooting for the fuck close on the roof deck behind the fake palm tree.

Note: a girl not returning your call is not necessarily a flake.  To qualify as a true flake, there has to have been real indications of attraction prior to getting her number.  Positive indicators include kissing, lots of touching, her playing with her necklace or rings,  sexually open body language, talking about you at least 30% as much as herself, seeking your approval, a willingness to be led by you around whatever venue you and her happen to be, and an obvious eagerness to give her number when you ask for it.

The following is an elaboration on my personal checklist for identifying which girls are likely to flake.  I subtract a point for every trait or behavior I think will increase the odds of a flake and add a point for those things that I think will reduce the odds of a flake.  Data that have little impact on flake odds are not included.

• works in service industry:    -1
• as a waitress:    -1
• younger than 25:    -1
• older than 30:    +1
• more than 10 years younger than me:    -1
• non-american*:    +1
• big breasted/voluptuous:    -1
• brief kissing:    +1
• extended makeout:    -1
• shy:    +1
• first on the dance floor:    -1
• slutty dresser:    -1
• wears drab colors:    +1
• easily distracted:    -1
• out with a large group of friends:    -1
• alpha female of the group:    -1
• mother hen/designated driver of the group:    +1
• lone wolf:    +1
• highly educated:    +1
• heavy makeup:    -1
• blonde or redhead:    -1
• parents still married:    +1
• child of divorce:    -1
• only child:    -1
• has at least one brother:    +1
• met her on a weeknight:    +1
• on a rainy weeknight:    +1
• at a dive bar:    +1
• at 3AM in a crimson-colored nightclub on a leather couch while she was rolling on E:    -100
• single mom:    +100

* The less Anglocized the country of origin, the more likely she’ll be courteous and answer your call.

At -10 points a flake is assured.  Throw that number away or give it to your best friend.  He’s just as likely to score with her as you are.  At +10 points, she’ll pick up on the first ring.

Some of these observations make sense; others seem counterintuitive.  A waitress, like a big breasted woman, has to deal with leering men all day, so she’s open to any rationalization to shelve the guy she gave her number to.  Plus, I have a theory that very feminized, high-estrogen women (i.e., those with curvy womanly bodies) have enhanced feminine mental traits as well, like flaking.

Non-Americans just don’t take men for granted as much.  Kissing a girl for too long will give her buyer’s remorse the next day when she wakes up feeling guilty.  Educated women live more structured lives and exhibit more self-discipline, two traits which are anti-flake.  Shy girls, surprisingly, will answer calls.  They have a negatively skewed sense of their own attractiveness to men as a result of not getting constant feedback through attention-seeking behavior.  Girls with high neuroticism/high extraversion who need constant reassurance of their desirability find more pleasure in collecting numbers rather than following up on them.  Younger girls have a longer time horizon and a wider suitor horizon so they can afford to dick around.  A girl who grew up in a broken household or with a daddy who let his loving kisses linger a little too long will be more likely to flake, but also more likely to feed her low self-worth by fucking you right away.

Single moms will drop their kid off at a baby hatch in order to free up time for a first date with you.

No Disturbance in the Force

Embarrassment is a beta emotion.

A year ago, I had number closed a waitress working her shift at a popular DC lounge.  We were able to build a halfway decent connection despite the fact that our conversation was interrupted every few minutes by a customer’s order.  Before I was about to leave I asked for her number.  She balked, and I thought maybe I had misread her interest.  But a quick glance around revealed otherwise – she didn’t want to be seen giving out her number in front of her boss and co-workers.  I told her to be a spy and go find a place to hide for a second, write her number on a piece of paper, and then return and secretly slip the paper into my hand as she walked by me.  I visually demonstrated how I would be holding my hand — down low against my side with my palm up turned backwards.  She slipped me the number 10 minutes later and I heard her giggle as she walked by, happy to get a chance to role play in between dealing with drunk patrons.  A couple days later I left a voicemail which she never returned.

I wasn’t surprised.  I gave it even odds that she would flake based on a mental checklist I made of her:

waitress:   -1
mid 20s:   -1
not enough rapport:   -1
lots of physical contact:   +1
conservatively dressed:   +1
demure:   +1
east european:   +1
large breasted:   -1

0

A few weeks after that encounter a friend called asking me to join him and entertain his date’s third-wheel girlfriend on promises that she was hot.  [editor’s note: he pumped the stock.]  He was not asking as a favor to me, though that was a potential side benefit, but as a way to demonstrate value to his new girlfriend that he could play matchmaker as well as pre-empt any sourpuss buzzkills by the single friend.  Motives don’t matter so much to me as long as I’m getting something out of the deal.

We went to the lounge where I had met the waitress, and she was working that night.  She recognized me with a double take when I walked in.  The four of us sat on a couple of couches and she came over to serve us.  Before I learned that women were to be treated like interchangeable commodities pre-sex, I would have found this situation awkward and uncomfortable.  One, for the reason that I’d feel obliged to pretend her flake, or even our conversation last time we met, never happened.  Two, for the misplaced discomfort I’d feel running game on another girl right under her nose.  These feelings faded away to uselessness once I realized that I have no obligation to ensure the peace of mind or social ease of any woman I have gamed or am considering gaming.  What’s more, with experience came the understanding that “awkward” situations which would make betas cringe and search for the nearest exit are in fact opportunities to increase the attraction voltage, and that they work on almost any woman.

While the waitress set our drinks down and I was palm-reading my date, I noticed a band-aid on her cheek along with the telltale flashing eyes and cocked grin of someone who was alternately uncomfortable and intrigued by my presence.  I didn’t stop holding my date’s hand when I turned to the waitress and began flirting with her all over again.  “I’d read your palm, too, but you might like what I have to say.”  [big smile, pointing to bandaid] “Wow, what happened?  Did you cut yourself shaving?”  I could see she was trying to figure me out.  I caught her a few times staring at me across the room from her post beside the bar.  On the way out, and with my date walking in front of me, I paused and told the waitress “Maybe we’ll get a chance to talk some more next time I’m in here.”

Devil-may-care nonchalance in the teeth of a socially tense moment is very attractive to women.  Like mirrors, women reflect our emotional state and if you are projecting awkwardness she will want to get away from you because she’ll start to feel the same way.  If a girl flakes on you, and you act as if nothing was amiss should you see her again, she will feel those quickening pulses of attraction for you.  As a player, never feel guilt or discomfort with your actions or with the whims of women.  You will be rewarded for your state control.

Waddaya say I take you home and…

At the 1:00 mark check out what is possibly the greatest pickup line ever:

This scene is layered with Oscar-worthy goodness.  It’s perfect how the guy nervously fidgets with his hand when he delivers the line.  She must have thought he was endearing.  Direct game rules.

Naked Pics v. Special Ringtones

Couples place a lot of irrelevant demands on each other in a selfish effort to ensure the purity of their relationships.  As soon as the demands start ratcheting up and the substance of the demands becomes less comprehensible you can bet that the complaints are coming from a place of insecurity.  It is a sign of impending breakup to have to pay tribute to unreasonable requests just to keep the happiness flowing.

The fact that I keep naked pics of my exes on my computer provoked one of these insecure pout-fests from a girl I was seeing.  She had “come across” them and wanted me to delete the pics to reassure her that I was not stuck in the past pining for a girl besides her.  I rationally (as only a male can do) explained to her that the pics were keepsakes, like any other cherished memory, and deleting them would be like whiting-out passages from my autobiography and turning my back on what made me who I am today.  They were no different than stored childhood photos or crayon drawings from 2nd grade art class.  The part I left unsaid was that the naked pics would provide excellent masturbation material in my old age.

Just when she was at the frothy height of her indignation she got a call from her ex-boyfriend, with whom she was good friends, and I noticed the ringtone was a chirpy musical number I hadn’t heard on her phone before.  I waited for the call to end then pulled out my cell and dialed her number.

*beep*   *beep*   *beep*

The default ringer!

“So you’re giving me a hard time about ex-gf pics while I don’t even merit a personalized ringer?! I get the default?  Not even the halfway decent default either… my important calls get the most basic factory-installed beep.  And your ex gets Vivaldi’s Four Seasons?”

“It costs money to get these ringers!  Why should I spend money on a special ringer for you when you keep pervert pics of your exes?  How do I know we’ll even be together in a month?”

chick logic.

“You didn’t know about my pics until today.  But that extra-loving ringtone for your ex has been in your phone since you guys met, eh?”

Back and forth we went, building to a crescendo of angry wild boar sex.  Most times the force of a woman’s emotions is enough to win her an argument despite the total lack of justification, but not this time.  In reality, the ringer issue didn’t bother me in the least, but I knew that in a girl’s mental landscape an unfavorable ringer discrepancy was a clear act of relationship mutiny, so I played it for all it was worth.  Pretending to be shocked and wounded, I filled her with guilt, until she dropped her demand and stalemate was reached.  The naked pics stayed safe for my viewing pleasure.

I would’ve won in a court of love, anyhow.  Ex-GF nudies are obviously less dubious than being a third-stringer on the ringer team.

TP Free

This guy wants to minimize his environmental impact by, among other draconian measures, cutting toilet paper out of his life.

1 ply?!?  cheap fucks!

************
Sawyer: “Now, I know everybody wants to know what you do instead of toilet paper. I’m not going to tell them. I’m going to let them go online and search this out for themselves. Let me just say it’s the Bedouin solution. If you don’t know what that is, you’re on your own out there.”
************

The Bedouin solution, for those who need to know, is to wipe with the left hand.  That is why they only eat with their right hands.  So if you meet a Bedouin and he extends his left hand to greet you, that means he thinks you are a douche.

This story made me wonder which modern conveniences I could live without and still function as a human being.

Microwave oven – No prob.  My gradual switch to a healthier diet over the years has practically obviated the need for a microwave.  Salmon?  Broiled or grilled.  Veggies?  Steamed.  Green tea?  My kettle does it almost as fast.  I would miss nuking the occasional hotdog.  Reheating leftovers would require more work.  I could train myself to eat cold food.

Internet – This would hurt.  Of course, I would survive.  but I’ve become so accustomed to doing so much online that it would add many hours to my week to do the same things offline.  The upside is that most of these things are pointless.  The loss of email just means less mental effort wasted reading unfunny forwards and constant updates on my friends’ happy hour antics.  Jerking it to porn would become a lot less convenient but it would feel dirty and subversive again from all the midnight trips to the seedy sex shop.  This would make the self-pleasuring a lot more exciting.  As would Victoria’s Secret catalog day.

Cell phone – The advantages of no cell outweigh the disadvantages in my opinion.  Fewer road accidents, no need to learn text game, no obligation to pick up the phone every time a girlfriend calls when I’m out on the prowl.  The downside is that I would not be able to use the cell as a prop when gaming girls to look like I’m closing a big deal or taking an urgent message from a mystery woman.

Car – I’ve already done this.  It was the best 6 months of my life.  I envy guys who live in cities where it is not a dating handicap to be car-less.

TV – I wouldn’t miss it a bit.  Total mind rot.  Well, OK, I might miss Animal Planet.  Chicken eating spiders, yo.

Ipod – Technically, IRiver.  I’m a nonconformist.  No earbuds means I’d have to interact with my environment.  Hmmm… could lead to opening more chicks during the daytime.

Digital camera – This is another good game prop.  I use it in a digicam routine (“ok, now let’s take a sad picture.  now a happy picture.  awesome.  now let’s take a pic of us flirting with each other.  oh man, look at that.  we look like those sappy couples everyone makes fun of.”) and as a method of social proof (“wanna see pics of italy?  woops, how’d she get in there? let’s just skip past that.”).  Tough to lose this one.  On the plus side, no more bad angle shots.

The Octodog – Life without this wondrous kitchen gadget?  Yeah right, may as well take away my TP.

Betas can find love, too

Once a man understands that his power is a function of his environment and not an absolute value, he can begin to game the system and take advantage of market inefficiences to score high quality pussy.  Alphas are naturally dominant in their environment and so for them there is no need to learn how to pick up women; the affections of women are something they’ve always known.  That is why asking an alpha for pickup advice is often a fruitless exercise.  It’s better to simply observe him in action and model yourself after him.  While books and forums and experience have taught me much, they all pale in comparison to the eye-opening enlightenment I received from my first mentor — an older male friend.  At the time, I was 14 and he was 26.  He was the cool-as-fuck older guy who let me get behind the handlebars for the first time in my life whereupon I promptly drove his motorcycle over a curb. Without missing a beat, he then taught me how to do donuts. The time I tagged along on one of his dates with a gorgeous grad student was the mental jolt I needed to set me on the path of righteousness.

Natural betas who were deprived of this mentoring and don’t or won’t put in the work on their own to learn how women operate and what they respond to still have options for happiness, but they will need to step off the hamster wheel and approach this advice with an open mind.  Given that male power is conditional on the context in which it is exploited, here are my suggestions for how losers in love can turn their fortunes around without lowering their standards:

1.  Travel to an economically depressed 2nd tier country like Russia or its East European neighbors where the culture is not too different and the women are known hot commodities and spend a couple months there.  He should avoid mail order bride services, save his money up, and go live there for a while.  This will reduce the chances of getting conned.  He’d be smart to get CDs on learning Russian and listen to them in his car while commuting to his crappy soul-killing job.  An average American beta with an average income, average style, who isn’t a drunkard, will get treated like a minor rock star in Russia, which, if the stories of men who have pioneered this route are true, really should be renamed Betatopia.  PS: Stay away from Moscow.  Stick to the sticks.

2.  Not keen on the hassle of traveling and importing a first rate piece of ass?  He can try scooping up the ones who shell out their own travel expenses and come here to the US.  Step one: identify those places where au pairs hang out in his particular city. They will usually be in a bunch, giggling nervously in heavy accents, because au pair services send them to their overseas assignments in groups.  The trick is to catch an au pair before she becomes aware of the true power of her beauty.  Remember that many of these young women are leaving countries where the men, ugly underemployed trolls all of them, treated them like trash.  Their self-esteems are in the basement.  Getting any attention from an American beta is like gold dust sprinkled on their shattered egos.  An American!  Interested in ME!  The beta needs to get to these girls BEFORE she realizes that most American women are shrieking ballbusting self-absorbed harpies with serious BMI issues and that American men will put her on a pedestal.  It doesn’t take long for a lifetime of trampled self-worth to shed like a chrysalis revealing the inner high maintenance princess inside.  So to get to them before the American experience corrupts them the beta needs to find those au pair groups that are multi-ethnic.  This is because the au pair services send them over in mixed groups.  Their first few months will be spent socializing with au pairs from many different countries.  Once they have settled into a routine and learned the ropes they will begin to hang out with girls from their own countries.  A few months later, they will have one or two American girls in their social circle.  By then, it is too late.

3.  Similar to the above suggestions, a man having trouble picking up chicks should consider relocating to the heartland.  His money will go farther, his style will be intriguing, and his public policy degree will be treated like a Certificate of Alphaness.  Girls will be a little dumber and less worldly so his marginally witty jokes will get more mileage.  He can probably afford a spacious house out there where a basement apartment was all he could swing in NYC.  Nightlife will be refreshingly free of eurotrash and $12 drinks.  Downsides:  obesity epidemic, resentful good ol boys prone to violence, lower job opportunities, bastard children, smell of manure.

4.  Lie.  This option requires some creativity and total lack of moral fiber, but the beta who can pull off the ‘talented mr. ripley’ routine will gain access to the secret society of hot chicks.  Convincingly lying about trips to the Himalayas, treasure hunting expeditions, brushes with death in the congo, high stakes gambling with celebrities in the Caribbean, the stint spent in prison, or his life as a fashion photographer, and having the presence of mind to keep the ruse up for months will get him laid.  Downside:  forget about long term relationships.

5.  Hit on damaged goods.  Women who have been through the emotional ringer are more likely to appreciate the beta’s honest, straightforward, naive propositioning.  Some women need to get burned more than once to learn any lessons, but eventually even the most die-hard player-lovers grow weary of the hurt.  Recent divorcees, lonely housewives, single moms, and former hookers with a heart of gold are good targets.  Downsides:  STDs, kids, short shelf lives.

6.  Castration.  Nothing removes neediness like zero sex drive.

Hedonic Convergence

dr. lecter has no interest in hypothesis. he doesn’t believe in syllogism,
or synthesis, or any absolute.
what does he believe in?
chaos. and you don’t even have to believe in it. it’s self-evident.
– hannibal

things fall apart; the center cannot hold
– yeats

Any instability in a relationship is like carrying a brimming cup of coffee around the office; once the coffee starts sloshing about in the cup the momentum builds until you’re forced to stand still to keep it from flying out.  Relationship management is like this — forward progress punctuated by dramafests followed by cooling off periods to give everything a chance to settle down.  The less stable the relationship, the wilder and more frequent the swings between drama and normalcy, until one day the coffee is all over your shirt and there’s nothing left but a stirrer in the cup.

We all aspire to drama-free love lives (or, at least, drama on our own terms) so the question is: what makes a stable relationship?  The best way to answer this is to turn to analogies, because they are more fun to write.  The US and USSR had a stable relationship through most of the Cold War.  Two superlovers with roughly the same number of nukes (i.e., alpha characteristics) for a few decades until the US began to outspend (i.e., raise her sexual market value above) her commie lover.  The USSR, big proud bear that he was, sensed his lover pulling away from him and his status diminishing in turn.  He frantically tried to play catch-up but it was too late; she finally saw him for what he always had been — a drunk, brutish, pigheaded, financially insolvent badboy who was falling apart at the seams.  The fair maiden US trotted off to make sweet love with Brussels eurocrats, leaving behind a sulking ex-BF to lick his wounds and rebound with loyalist east Ukraine crack hos.

When a guy and a girl start a torrid affair with equal number of nukes they can fall in the kind of love that will turn crunch-faced cynicism into limpid-eyed naivete.  JFK said as much during the Cuban missile crisis.  You know where you stand with this person.  There is no feeling that you are any less than your lover and no fear that they will leave you or go berserk when the chips are down.  While you both have your own groups of friends, you know that you two together are the most important people in the world — Wonder Twins in the form of a romantic movie moment.  It’s the mutually assured destruction theory of relationships — a cataclysmic breakup would mean both of you will be much worse off and unlikely to find another perfectly matched partner.

Therefore, the best way to ensure a stable relationship is to be with someone who matches you in attractiveness.  This is derisively known as settling, because at the start of our journeys to fulfillment in the only thing that matters – namely, love and sex – we bristle with optimistic hubris and shoot for the stars.  Thoughts of being with someone who is less than our ideal is anathema.  Women are particularly prone to this self-deluding malady, sometimes so in thrall to their romantic ideals that they take the Acela straight into spinsterhood, sad, but principled.  Their aversion to settling is stronger than men’s because the cost to them of a bad choice in mating partner is much greater than it would be for a man.  And the fact that women can go long stretches without sex, like a camel without water in the desert, and still keep their sanity helps them stick to their guns.  (A girl friend once told me “For women, when we’re not getting it, we kinda forget about it.  When we’re getting it, we crave it.  For men, when you guys aren’t getting it, you crave it.”)

The problem with ideals is that you had better be pretty ideal yourself if you want from others what others want from you.  You get what you give.  If the planets align and you miraculously hook a partner way above you in sexual market value, be prepared to feel a tightening in your chest every time your lover doesn’t answer a text message promptly or you see him or her garnering the attention of the opposite sex while at a party together.  This is your emotional backchannel letting you know that you are punching above your weight and it might be time to think more realistically if you want a shot at a happy life.  Without a closely-matched lover we are doomed to scooping out buckets of water from a boat with a hole in its hull.

By “closely-matched” I mean, of course, the woman’s beauty = the man’s power.  For every one point up the hotness scale a woman goes, the man had better bring a commensurate increase in power.  Luckily for a man, he can work to increase his power.  A woman is pretty much stuck with what she was born with.  The good news for women is that if you are born with the genes for beauty there isn’t a whole lot you need to do to sell yourself; your product has inherent value.  The good news for men is that power comes in many forms — looks, charm, creativity, money, dominance — that while somewhat governed by genetic heritage can also be improved upon.

When the pairing is mismatched, the lower value partner will exert less control over the direction of the relationship.  He or she will be constantly buffeted by the ever-present threat of higher value prospects in the mating pool winning the affections of the higher value partner.  This is bad for the ego and is a recipe for perpetual heartache.  The lure of your amazing catch will wear thin once you realize you are not the locus of his or her love.

I once dated a girl who was quite stunning, educated, and career-oriented.  My game and innate qualities allows me to handle women like this.  But she had a wealthy ex-fiancee whom she had been with for three years prior to meeting me.  The combination of the time, love and experiences she shared with him plus his keeping in contact with her plus his objectively high status meant that I would constantly have to fight to be perceived by her as an equal to her ex.  For five months, I succeeded, by playing some of my best gamesmanship.  It was like watching a tennis match, with volleys of calculated aloofness and mighty serves of manipulative jealousy, backhands of backhanded compliments and psychological power plays at the net.  I even kept two girls in reserve, fucking them and loving them on the in-between days, to make sure I stayed stone cold savvy.  No matter… I always felt she had one foot in, one foot out of our relationship.  In the end, she married the ex-fiancee.  Our fling helped sharpen my game immensely, but at the cost of time better spent cultivating what I had with the other girls in my life.

It’s no spring breeze for the higher value partner in a relationship, either.  While the HVPs have the leverage to control the outcome of their relationships, they will always feel temptation to trade up.  Resisting temptation is an exercise in futility when your whole world is saturated with willing accomplices and every one of your senses is telling you the person you chose to invest your valuable time with is not the best you can do.  Sitting in the driver’s seat of a 20 year old Honda civic will get you where you want to go, but the ride won’t be as fun as it could be and you’ll feel guilty for pushing the car to the brink of mechanical failure.  Especially when someone just threw you the keys to a brand new Lexus.  Dating multiple partners who are OK with your polyamory will alleviate some of the tension, but eventually dating disharmony frays even the best of intentions.

We’ve all known couples who dated out of their league.  And when they inevitably broke up, we were not surprised.  But thinking about those breakups, how many were really devastated by them?  More likely, the exes experienced some relief mixed in with the feelings of loss.  The archetypical high-energy breakups, the ones where there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth, social withdrawal, and months of rehabilitation, are usually the result of closely matched relationships blindsided by some fluke of the fates or one partner taking the other for granted and realizing too late how perfectly matched they really were.

Happiness in love rests in large part on your ability to get past your ego and see yourself for who you truly are and how much you actually bring to the table.  It’s a soul-wrenching process of self-examination that sometimes only happens after years of reality have pounded into you the fact of your true worth.  If you don’t like your market value, then do what you can to raise it.  Otherwise, keep tilting at windmills.  You never know, someday soon human nature might change.